Microcement in Dubai and Across the UAE

Microcement, made for the way Dubai lives

Microcement is a thin, polymer-modified cement coating — just a few millimetres thick — trowelled by hand into a smooth, continuous surface. Because it’s so thin, it wraps floors, walls, stairs and even bathrooms in one seamless mineral skin, usually laid straight over what’s already there. No grout lines, no joints: a calm, contemporary finish with a soft, cloudy movement all its own.

That suits Dubai interiors particularly well. It turns a tiled villa floor into one uninterrupted plane without ripping anything out; it takes a feature wall, a staircase and a ceiling and speaks them in a single material; and it holds its composure through the heat and humidity that punishes lesser finishes.

One material, whole-home

The reason designers keep specifying it is continuity. A microcement floor can run from the living room through the kitchen and up the stairs; the same surface can climb a wall or line a shower. Fewer visual breaks make a space read larger and quieter — which is exactly what a modern Dubai home is usually after.

We apply a professional Italian microcement system, chosen for its colour stability and durability, and finished by our own trained crews. You pick the shade from our colour chart, approve a physical sample of the exact finish, and we take it from there — substrate to sealer.

Microcement or micro concrete — one surface, many names in Dubai and the UAE

Search for it and you will find it spelled every way: microcement, micro cement, micro concrete, microtopping, micro topping, even microcemento. In Dubai and across the UAE they all mean the same thing — a seamless, millimetres-thin cement finish laid over an existing floor or wall — and we apply it under any of those names. The choice that matters is not the word but the build-up: the primer and mesh below, the sealer above, and a crew that has laid hundreds of square metres of it. That is what the prices on this page buy.

Microcement flooring in Dubai: where it suits and where it does not

Floors are the biggest use and the most demanding one. A floor build gets a higher-strength base coat and a wear-grade topcoat, which is why floors start from AED 250/m² against walls from AED 220. It goes straight over sound tiles, marble or screed, adds about 3 mm of height, and can run from the living room through the corridor and up the stairs without a single joint. Whether your search said micro concrete flooring or micro topping flooring, this is the same floor.

Where it suits: homes and normal-use rooms, living rooms, bedrooms, hallways, kitchens and stairs, and terraces and balconies in the outdoor-rated colours. Where it does not: garages, driveways, workshops and busy commercial floors with trolleys or constant heavy traffic. We will say so at the site visit rather than quote it. For a garage or workshop floor we would point you to epoxy flooring, and for a driveway or an open area that takes cars to a resin bound stone carpet.

Where else microcement goes in a Dubai home

Almost anywhere indoors, and in a few places it should not. The honest room-by-room map:

The kitchen: micro cement floors, walls and splashbacks

Floors, walls and splashbacks are an easy yes — seamless, grease-proof, nothing for grime to lodge in. The worktop is not ours to coat: we apply microcement to floors, walls and ceilings only — not to worktops, islands or kitchen furniture. For the worktop, a stone, quartz or porcelain slab from a fabricator is the right choice, with microcement on the floor and splashback around it. Details in our microcement kitchen guide.

Walls: a micro cement wall finish is not a paint

A microcement wall is a trowelled mineral coating two to three millimetres thick, not a paint: it is applied in coats with a steel trowel, cured and sealed, and the colour is in the material rather than on it. If a wall only needs colour, paint is cheaper and we will say so. Microcement wall paint does not exist as a product; what is sold under that name is usually a textured effect paint, which is a different thing with a different life. Feature walls, bathroom walls and kitchen walls are where the real finish earns its rate — see microcement walls in the UAE.

Bathrooms, showers and wet rooms

Yes, with a full tanking membrane beneath and an immersion-grade sealer above — that is why wet zones carry their own rate from AED 350/m². Everything about it, including the problems that show up when it is done badly, is on our microcement bathrooms page.

Microcement (microtopping) colours and texture in Dubai light

Microcement colour is mineral pigment mixed through the coat, so every surface has a soft cloudy movement rather than one flat tone; the sealer then deepens it. Texture runs from near-smooth to a visible trowel grain, and the Dubai sun through a west-facing window will read a grey two shades lighter than the showroom did. We always sample on your wall before committing — the full story is in microcement colours.

Outdoor: can microcement go outside in Dubai?

Yes — in the right colour. Part of our microcement range is rated for outdoor as well as indoor use; the rest is indoor-only, and we tell you which is which when you choose the colour on the sample. Outdoors we use the outdoor-rated colours on terraces, balconies and outside walls with normal foot traffic. Two limits stay: microcement is never for a driveway or anything that takes cars, and in the UAE sun its protective sealer works harder outside than it does indoors, so an outdoor surface needs its care more often. For a driveway or an open area that takes vehicles, a resin bound stone carpet is the surface we recommend instead.

Microtopping in Dubai

Microtopping is the same product as microcement: a thin, hand-trowelled cement coating laid over what is already there. The names differ because suppliers and countries use different words, not because the surface is different. We apply it under either name, and the starting rates are the same: from AED 220/m² for walls and feature surfaces, from AED 250/m² for floors and from AED 350/m² for wet zones, supply and install, with the exact quote after a site visit. The full explanation is in what is microtopping.

How an RBS microcement job runs, day by day

The steps are the same on every job; what changes is how many times we repeat coat 4 and 5 across the area. On a typical Dubai apartment or villa room:

Day	What happens
Site visit	Substrate check (tiles, screed or existing microcement), moisture reading, movement joints marked, sample approved
1	Protection of the room, floor/wall degreased and primed; mesh embedded where the substrate can move; tanking membrane laid first in wet zones
1–2	Base coat one, sanded once cured
2–3	Base coat two, sanded once cured — this is the structural layer, and it is where a rushed crew cuts corners
3–4	Finish coat one — the colour goes in here, hand-trowelled
4–5	Finish coat two — the cloudy, hand-worked movement that makes microcement look like microcement is made in this pass
5–6	Sealing — two or more coats, immersion-grade in wet zones, cured before the room goes back into use
6–7	Handover — the surface is walkable but not yet at full cure hardness; we tell every client the safe-use window before we leave

Nothing here can be sped up by adding people — cure time is chemistry, set by the product and the room’s temperature and humidity, not by labour. A crew that promises a whole villa floor in two days is skipping a coat, a cure, or both.

A worked example: a 40 m² apartment living-room floor

Real numbers, from our published rates, walked through on the project size we quote most often — a 40 m² Dubai apartment living/dining floor over sound existing porcelain tiles:

• Scope decided at the site visit. Tiles are sound and flat, so no demolition; mesh goes only at the door thresholds and the one hairline crack the tiler’s screed left under the dining table.
• Build-up: primer, mesh at the two movement points, two base coats, two colour finish coats, a wear-grade sealer (dry room, no tanking needed).
• Price: floors start from AED 250/m², so 40 m² starts from around AED 10,000, supply and install — matching the worked example already quoted in our microcement cost guide.
• Time: five working days, most of it curing rather than trowelling; the family used the rest of the apartment throughout and moved back into the room on day six.
• What would have changed the number: an uneven screed needing levelling first, a colour requiring a bespoke mix, or turning the same floor into a wet zone would each move the price and the timeline — which is exactly why every quote follows a site visit rather than a phone call.

Microcement vs tiles, epoxy and polished concrete in a Dubai renovation

	Microcement	Tiles	Epoxy flooring	Polished concrete
Added thickness	~2–3 mm	8–12 mm plus adhesive bed	A few mm, poured and self-levelling	None — the existing slab is ground down
Joints / grout lines	None	Yes, grout lines throughout	None	None
Goes over existing floor	Yes, straight over sound tiles	Only with a demolition or a height allowance	Usually needs a bare or primed substrate	No — needs the raw slab exposed, not a finish laid on top
Wet-zone use	Yes, with tanking + immersion sealer	Yes, standard bathroom material	Rare in wet rooms — usually a garage/utility floor	Not typical for showers
Starting price in Dubai	From AED 220/m² (walls) / 250/m² (floors)	Quote-only — not a system we install	Priced after a site visit	Priced after a site visit
Best fit here	Renovations that want one seamless surface without demolition	New-build floors where grout lines aren’t a concern	Garages, workshops, showrooms wanting a poured resin floor	New-build or existing slabs meant to stay exposed, not covered

We don’t lay tiles, so that price is left blank rather than guessed — see the honest comparison in polished concrete vs tile flooring for how that decision is actually made. Epoxy and polished concrete are priced after a site visit for a different reason: we do both, but neither has a published per-m² rate — see metallic epoxy and polished concrete for how each is actually quoted.

Failure modes we actually see in Dubai microcement jobs

Every one of these is preventable, and all of them are things we look for on a site visit precisely because a previous job — ours or someone else’s — got them wrong:

• Hairline cracking that follows the tile grout beneath it. This happens when mesh is skipped over an existing joint that keeps moving. The fix is mesh at every known movement point, not a blanket mesh nobody paid for.
• A hazy, milky patch that never fully clears. Almost always a coat sealed before it had properly cured — common when a schedule gets compressed to hit a moving-in date. There is no cosmetic fix once it has happened; the patch has to be cut back and redone.
• Sealer dulling fastest on the splashback behind a stove or hob. Heat and oil attack the sealer, not the cement underneath, which is why the wall right behind a hard-used gas hob is detailed for that heat rather than treated like any other wall.
• Colour that reads patchy under raking evening light. Caused by mixing finish-coat batches on site instead of pre-blending enough material for the whole wall or floor in one batch — a process discipline issue, not a material fault.
• Bathroom edges lifting at the shower tray or floor-wall junction. The coating held; the tanking detail underneath it at that one junction did not. It is the single reason wet zones cost more and get their own line on every quote — the waterproofing, not the mineral finish, is doing the work.

So will microcement crack? Not when the base is stable and these details are done; for what causes a hairline, what a proper installation does about it and how to tell a hairline from a structural crack, see does microcement crack.

More microcement guides

• Microcement pros and cons: the honest list
• Does microcement crack?
• How long does microcement last?
• Is microcement waterproof?
• Microcement over existing tiles
• What is microtopping (micro concrete)?
• Microcement vs tiles